A number of naturally occurring brines contain a significant amount of lithium values. The lithium values often can be recovered as precipitated lithium carbonate using techniques such as stage-wise evaporative concentration of the brine followed by treatment of the concentrated brine with soda ash. Exemplary references include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,116,856, 4,116,858, 4,159,311, 4,221,767, 4,291,001, 4,347,327, 4,348,295, 4,348,296, 4,348,297, 4,376,100, 4,381,349, 4,430,311, 4,461,714, 4,472,362, 4,477,367, 4,472,962, and 5,599,516, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.
The extracted lithium values have use, for example, in nuclear fissure reactors, in lithium batteries, and the synthesis of compounds for pharmaceutical uses.
The existing processes for extracting lithium brines; however, often suffer from slow throughput and may be cost ineffective.